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Recordings

A deeply seductive album of Spanish songs performed by the young Spanish soprano Sylvia Schwartz. This collection comprises works by Enrique Granados (1867–1916), Jesús Guridi (1886–1961), Joaquín Turina (1882–1949), Eduardo Toldrá (1895–1962) and ...» More

Why in the dusk does the nightingale strike up his harmonious song? Perhaps against the king of day he holds some grievance and seeks to avenge some wrong? Perhaps in his breast he conceals such sorrow, that in the shadows he hopes to find some relief, sadly singing songs of love. Ah, of love! And perhaps there is some flower, trembling with the shame of love, who is enthralled by his singing? It is a mystery, this song, which wreathed in shadow the nightingale sings! Ah! Love is like a flower at the mercy of the sea. Love! Love! Ah! There is no song without love. Ah! Nightingale, your song is a hymn to love. Ah, nightingale!

Sylvia Schwartz and Malcolm Martineau open their Granados group with La maja y el ruiseñor, a song that is sung during the third tableau of Goyescas. Granados had originally conceived this work as a set of piano pieces in two books inspired by the paintings of Francisco de Goya, and it was premiered as such in 1911 (Book I) and 1914 (Book II). The fourth of the six movements is called Quejas, o La maja y el ruiseñor (‘Complaints, or The maja and the nightingale’). These piano pieces became so popular that Granados later adapted the music for an opera of the same title. The libretto was by the Valencian journalist Fernando Periquet, the poet of the Tonadillas en estilo antiguo (or Colleción de tonadillas), and the original intention had been to give the premiere at the Paris Opéra—a plan thwarted by the outbreak of the First World War. It was eventually given at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, on 28 January 1916, in a double bill with Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci. La maja y el ruiseñor is sung in the opera by Rosario in the garden of her home: seated on a bench, she hears a nightingale and begins her song.